Why did the young man have a crush to begin with? Perhaps a sense of longing for something pleasurable and a companion. Why a companion? Loneliness is not desired? Why? Boredom. Loneliness is one step away from boredom in my opinion. Boredom rules the non-survival aspects of our motivations (and discomfort). The positive joy of anything is at root, riding a wave of secondary goals that sprang forth from a general angst of not falling into a state of boredom. Keep yourself entertained long enough to not even give yourself a chance to see the root of the cause. — schopenhauer1

In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire. To say that this is "really" an unconscious flight from boredom strikes me as implausible. How could such an idea be tested? I love Schopenhauer, but I always his reduction of pleasure to the removal of pain was contrary to my direct experience. I strikes me as a sort of naive "biologism," as if we were only amoeba responding to being poked. He probably should have read Hegel instead of enviously mocking him. (To be clear, they're both great.) Consciousness evolves creatively. History is not repetition, and the essence of man is not fixed. Or rather that which is distinctly human is precisely this escape or violation of fixity.

I'm suggesting that feeling is what it is apart from the layer of thinking on top of it. As I see it, you're attached to one "myth" or conceptual overlay of experience and I am attached to another. The difference perhaps is that I'll confess my own "myth" is ultimately groundless. I don't pretend to prove it in terms of objective or pre-established criteria. Personality is a risk.Your last line paints me as someone hiding from an important truth, yet this important truth grounds the necessity-for-you of what amounts to mass suicide (anti-natalism). Is it not equally plausible that you're "stuck on" a seductive idea? That rather than having the idea the idea has you? I've been "had" by the idea myself. In my most nauseated moments I have wished out of pity and disgust for the whole species to be wiped out. In retrospect I was thinking and judging from a narrowness of experience and thought.

I find this to be a more sophisticated description of human desire:

[The] impossible synthesis of assimilation and an assimilated which maintains its integrity has deep-rooted connections with basic sexual drives. The idea of "carnal possession" offers us the irritating but seductive figure of a body perpetually possessed and perpetually new, on which possession leaves no trace. This is deeply symbolized in the quality of "smooth" or "polished." What is smooth can be taken and felt but remains no less impenetrable, does not give way in the least beneath the appropriative caress -- it is like water. This is the reason why erotic depictions insist on the smooth whiteness of a woman's body. Smooth --it is what reforms itself under the caress, as water reforms itself in its passage over the stone which has pierced it....It is at this point that we encounter the similarity to scientific research: the known object, like the stone in the stomach of the ostrich, is entirely within me, assimilated, transformed into my self, and is entirely me; but at the same time it is impenetrable, untransformable, entirely smooth, with the indifferent nudity of a body that is beloved and caressed in vain. — Sartre

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God. — T Clark

I overlooked replying to this earlier. Yes, those are great lines. I've read the same Mitchell translation. I was just looking it over again, here: http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html (for others, since I know you have a copy.)

Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.
— Tao

"If you are wrong, you were right."

To me this is a pretty good way to communicate the beauty of science. You can only be wrong in the present if you committed yourself in the past to a risky prediction. You were right in that commitment and risk. A scientist lets his theories do his dying for him.

In other words, the scientist (ideally) takes the risk of clarity. Popper noted that the Freudian psychoanalysts and Marxists whom he knew could always find a way to interpret anything as a confirmation of their theory. Because these theories were indestructible in that sense, they were also trivial or empty in another sense.

The prediction is either wrong or right. The gadget does or does not work. This is (ideally) publicly accessible. It is exoteric, naked.

One of things I love about Popper was his acknowledgement of the irrational, creative element in science. The source of the hypothesis doesn't matter. Science (as he conceives it) is a source-independent criterion for hypotheses. I think the criterion itself is justified pragmatically and aesthetically. As Darth notes, science is heroic. There's an asceticism or warrior-like courage in making ideas specific enough (usually quantitative) for refutation and abandonment.

We can drop the "smart" theme. That's fine.

As far as I can tell, you've mostly described in vague generality how philosophy should be done. I think it's only fair to ask you for the results of doing philosophy this way. What have you discovered? What do you now know that others might benefit from knowing?

What is your vision of life? Do you trust mainstream science? Do you believe in God? If so, how do you understand or envision God? What is the purpose, if any, of life? I still don't have a picture of what you believe. Where are you generally coming from?

I don't see why the human project needs to be carried forth. It is absurd in the grandest sense. — schopenhauer1

This absurdity is (from a certain perspective) part of the charm. My current view is that existence is (globally) a brute fact. As Witt put it, It is not how but THAT the world is that is the "mystical." As Nietzsche might have put, this absence of a God in the sense of a cancellation of our absurdity is also the space for self-creation and freedom.

You yourself write absurd in the grandest sense. "Only the damned are grand." If human reality included a "prime directive," then we wouldn't be "Dasein." We wouldn't be self-interpreting, self-creating beings. We wouldn't ourselves be gods.

I'm not saying that life isn't (among other things) truly and utterly horrible. But these others things are just as significant. For instance, you reduce human motivations to a flight from pain and boredom. Of course these are actual and important motivations among others. But is human desire in general negative? When a young man has a crush on a young woman, for instance, is this unsatisfied desire only pain? Or does it not light up the world with a sweet anguish? Then there's also intense philosophical pleasure. When Schopenhauer was clarifying his pessimistic thoughts, I suggest that he experienced the intense "imperial" pleasure of conquering the chaos of human experience. He imposed concept on confusion. That's a distinctly human pleasure, the reframing of existence as a whole.

You probably know the thought of "eternal recurrence." I would answer the demon yes. That would entail horrible suffering. My youth was not a bowl of cherries. But I would say yes to the terrible-ecstatic drama of figuring out all over again what I've figured out. God finds himself as God in the nightmare of being abandoned by God. Is this a myth? Sure. But no less than the reduction of man to a creature of boredom and pain. Of course I know that I don't know you. Maybe you're a Turing machine passing the Turing test. Maybe the "gods" (chance or brute fact) didn't give you certain resources. Maybe my affirmation flows from a stupid brute fact and my words are useless for you. I accept that possibility. But I hope you'll tolerate my input in a friendly spirit, since this forum is a place for what would otherwise be presumption and rudeness (airing our intimate, metaphysical views and criticizing those of others.)

Indeed. I remember the struggle to embrace my "thrown-ness." We are always given these parents, this face, this situation (class, gender, race) --as terribly unique in their synthesis as a snowflake or a fingerprint. An unripe personality wastes time resenting and evading this actual "raw material." In that sense they flee from their "existence," their "jutting out" from the inherited theyness. They hide behind ready-made masks, even the ready-made mask of authenticity itself -- in-authentically understood as fixed in some dead man's language.

I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence.

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?' — Emerson

I think this is one interpretation of "eating the bread of Christ." To know truly and deeply is to assimilate, to make the inheritance one's own. To "speak from the I" is not to speak from the "alienated" position of the non-eaten sage or prophet but rather from one's center, which was indeed formed from this heritage but ideally transcends while including it. One of the things this means for me is that attachment to any particular jargon is an inferior or unripe approach. So I'm delighted to see Emerson in Heidegger, for instance. As I see it, any jargon is dead until it is digested to the point that it can be paraphrased (becomes jargon-independent.)

The idea of interminable decimals which is what we appear to have feeds back into the assertion of a continuous universe. — MikeL

This touches on a fascinating problem. To what degree is our intuition of continuity "real"? The real number system of pure math does a pretty good job of capturing this continuity. (There was of course a massive philosophical controversy with the advent of set theory.) In theory these are the same real numbers of physics. But in practice (as I understand it) we use floating point rational numbers. So "pure math" is not the basis of physics. We believe physics because it predicts with impressive but never perfect accuracy and empowers us to build working computers, fly through the air, etc.

So are we ever talking about the thing in itself? Or do we just have at all times the state-of-the-art prediction-control system? Must we embrace the scientific image as the metaphysical image? I think a "total" vision of human reality must include the existence-for-us of all these "images" side by side. Every particular image can be viewed as a useful reduction of the total image for this or that particular purpose.

If no one is smarter than anyone else, then why would you need to tell me this? Why would you need to explain to me, an equally smart person, what philosophy is really about? It's a performative contradiction.

Finally, good fiction tends to reveal life. It is hyper-real. Dostoevsky comes to mind.

I love Emerson, too. "They set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought." I suppose that I've been seduced by thought for many years now.

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Every man is a new method.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

— Emerson

That last quote reminds me of Heidegger's authenticity. We are thrown into a heritage. We don't start from nothing. So we must go forward by going back. Instead of idle dreaming we have to toil at the actual given, play the cards we were actually dealt.

Yes, in the end all metaphysics must arrive at a brute fact. So my claim is that my approach demands the least possible in these terms. There will still remain the question of "why anything?", but instead of the question being "why something rather than nothing?", it becomes "why something rather than everything?". — apokrisis

The "why something rather than everything" is a nice twist. I'm glad that you agree, though, that "all metaphysics must arrive at brute fact." It's not easy to squeeze that out of philosophers.

f you have two things in play - the thesis and antithesis that make up the two poles of a dichotomy - then infinite regress does get terminated by a limit. We can roll back our state of somethingness - which is some yin and yang of crisply developed opposites - back towards the shared limit within which they converge. Vagueness can absorb the contradictory (or contrarieties, to be more Aristotelian) as each is folding back into its other. — apokrisis

Interesting. It reminds me of (without necessarily be the same as) differance.

[The philosophical term différance refers to conceptual differentiation and deferral of meaning in processes of signification. Wiki]

It confirms that the subject, and first of all the conscious and speaking subject, depends upon the system of differences and the movement of différance, that the subject is not present, nor above all present to itself before différance, that the subject is constituted only in being divided from itself, in becoming space, in temporizing, in deferral; and it confirms that, as Saussure said, "language [which consists only of differences] is not a function of the speaking subject.

...
Différance is not only irreducible to any ontological or theological—ontotheological—reappropriation, but as the very opening of the space in which ontotheology—philosophy—produces its system and its history, it includes ontotheology, inscribing it and exceeding it without return.
— Derrida

I see now that you are thinking of a related issue, the idea that any actual measurement has only finite accuracy. Yes, that's a good point also. It's only strengthened by the additional consideration that there are irrational lengths. In the case of irrational lengths (just about all of them), even an "ideal" perfect measurement wouldn't work. In most cases, that measurement would require an infinite amount of information. The number would not be not compressible. So even if our measurement device could spit out ideal entities like "pi," such computable (compressible) lengths of finite information are a vanishing subset of all lengths. A random length almost surely "contains" or implies infinite information.

Now of course you can argue for the alternative - that existence is simply uncreated and eternal as some sort of always definite brute fact. It doesn't satisfy logically. But that is the other point of view — apokrisis

Hi, apo. I generally like your thermodynamic theory to the degree that I understand it. It's fresh. It has a dark beauty.

Now to my question. Why this association of brute facticity and uncreated and eternal? As I understand the argument for brute fact, it's really about human reasoning. It doesn't matter if existence was always here or whether it sprang from nothing. Both could be understood as brute facts, depending on the theory which included them.

You write a vagueness as origin. Would this not be a brute fact? It's really just the old question of infinite regress. Either the chain of whys stretches forever of this chain terminates in a "just because" or "I don't know." Since I think brute fact is logically necessary, I don't think it's a flaw in a metaphysical vision to acknowledge an "irrational" origin.

Do you reject the idea that there is brute fact at the origin of your own vision? If so, how and why?

Here are some other versions of the same general idea:

When the existence of each member of a collection is explained by reference to some other member of that very same collection, then it does not follow that the collection itself has an explanation. For it is one thing for there to be an explanation of the existence of each dependent being and quite another thing for there to be an explanation of why there are dependent beings at all. (Rowe 1975: 264)

...

Peter van Inwagen (1983: 202–04) argues that the PSR must be rejected. If the PSR is true, every contingent proposition has an explanation. Suppose P is the conjunction of all contingent true propositions. Suppose also that there is a state of affairs S that provides a sufficient reason for P. S cannot itself be contingent, for then it would be a conjunct of P and entailed by P, and as both entailing and entailed by P would be P, so that it would be its own sufficient reason. But no contingent proposition can explain itself. Neither can S be necessary, for from necessary propositions only necessary propositions follow. Necessary propositions cannot explain contingent propositions, for if x sufficiently explains y, then x entails y, and if x is necessary so is y. So S cannot be either contingent or necessary, and hence the PSR is false. Thus, if the cosmological argument appeals to the PSR to establish the existence of a necessary being whose existence is expressed by a necessary proposition as an explanation for contingent beings, it fails in that it cannot account for the contingent beings it purportedly explains.
— SEP

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#Obje1UnivJust

If space is infinitely divisible, nothing can be measured accurately as there is no accurate measurement to give – the decimals keep rolling. — MikeL

This is a good point. I've reflected on this myself. What you are talking about (as I see it) is the real numbers. "Most" real numbers are not rational. It's impossible to measure something that is exactly pi inches long, for instance, since pi is an ideal entity far more complex than an intuition-friendly rational number. Most real numbers are worse than pi, not only transcendental but incomputable. We don't even have a program that spits out a decimal representation for most real numbers. The set of all such programs is merely countable. The probability of choosing a computable number among all the real numbers randomly is 0. (To be clear, this is mathematics rather than metaphysics.)

As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to. — T Clark

It's all great, but I especially like that part.

Yes, back and back to those beautiful old truths in their newness.

We probably mean about the same thing. Maybe the word "revere" doesn't get the tone right. For example, there's a certain kind of man that I especially respect. That's also the kind of man I want to be. As I have lived, loved, and suffered, my idea of what a good man is has evolved. Sometimes trying to live up to a notion of virtue reveals its deficiencies as a notion of virtue. This is a crisis that summons our creativity. Or maybe we just search the books for a new story of virtue that fits our new situation better.

We don't usually throw out a notion altogether. That might literally be insanity. But we modify the notion. So the notion steers our experience which steers the notion. That is my demystification of Hegelian dialectic. As far as "absolute knowledge" goes, the version of it in this demystification would just be a stable or tranquil compatibility between the notion of virtue and the lifestyle. After a while of staying up on the horse without falling off, a person might feel that they've mostly figured things out, at least where their own lives are concerned. But for me this does not necessitate projecting one's personal solution or equilibrium as a truth for all. (No need to hide it, either.)

Anyway, that's my general vision of spirituality. On the level of detail, some people's image of virtue will involve a relationship with the traditional God, maybe not eating pork, social activism, reading certain books, getting rich, staying poor and honest, etc. Contemplating this "general structure" from a certain distance is a big part of philosophy for me. I like to zoom out.

I think so to. But let's say we somehow find an alien or species of aliens who created humanity. Will we worship them? The only God worth worshiping, as far as I can see, must possess human virtues. A demi-urge, etc., would just be a fact like the sun without human virtues. We might fear him or it and obey him or it in our fear. But would this be religion?

On the other hand, human virtue exists already. We all have an image of it, even if this image varies from person to person. We already worship "God" when we revere the virtuous. That's how I see it. And that's a God who needs our help and even a God we participate in. Of course this is just the incarnation myth taken more literally than usual.

Thanks for the kind words, my friend. I look forward to your thoughts.

Just to be clear, what I mean by groundless is not the equal "reasonableness" of beliefs. What I have in mind is that authenticity is a risky venture. Heidegger (who has great moments in my view) talked about the "they" that "one" is for the most part. We all emerge from the "they." What "one" does is, for instance, to reason in a certain way. Or "one" understands and worships God in a certain way. Our initial grounds are inherited from the "they," from our culture. So to emerge as an individual is to be "groundless" with respect to this "they" and this inherited culture. If we aren't groundless in this sense, then we aren't significantly individual. We are just going through the permutations.

There's nothing wrong with that. One might ask: "what's so great about being individual?" My answer would be that certain social roles prioritize exactly this. An unoriginal poet is a failure. That's why I read existentialism's authenticity as the anxiety of influence. Because Heidegger and Sartre were philosophers, they were deeply familiar with such anxiety, with the threat of the shame of being unoriginal and therefore failures in terms of their fundamental pose. They projected this rare problem outward as a universal problem. Most people are (seems to me) happy to be virtuous in the traditional way. They don't understand virtue in terms of the modification of virtue itself. Great philosophers tend to reinvent philosophy itself. If they change our understanding of rationality, then they change what philosophers understand to be virtue.

I'm inclined to agree, though that is of course just my opinion. There is both stupid and profound religion out there, as I see it.

To me, discussions about capital "G" God are not metaphysics. There either is an intelligent being who created the universe and rules our lives or there's not. It's appropriate to deal with that as a scientific question, although I'm not really interested in that aspect of god. Most such discussions - from both sides of the question - lack rigor or sense. I gave my daughter a copy of "The God Delusion" because I thought it was such a good example of bad thinking. It makes me laugh and it makes me angry.

My vision of god is metaphysics. Thinking of the universe as living or conscious makes sense to me. The value of metaphysics is whether or not it's useful, not if it's true. To me, the idea of god is as useful as science. I think science without an acknowledgement that the universe is as much human as it is physical is a fatal flaw in much scientific thought. Smug scientists sneering at religion are missing half the story.

I really enjoy discussions with you. I'm glad you joined the forum. — T Clark

Thanks for the kind words. I also enjoy discussions with you.

My vision of god is also metaphysics. Roughly speaking, the universe is brute fact that is conscious of itself as such, through us. The "scientific image" is a small part of reality as a whole. Personality or life as we know it is a "primordial" fact. To call our usual experience an illusion is to privilege a mere tool (the scientific image [Sellars]) over the context from which the tool emerged and in which it is useful and justified in the first place. In short, I respect science and even work in science but don't like scientism. So I also thinking sneering scientists are missing (at least) half the story. When they play a being meta-physicians, they often look naive. Feyerabend saw the threat of this ideology.

I'm not a religious person, but I still maintain what I implied earlier, that asserting God as an empirical cheapens God. So if I were a traditional theist, I'd probably approach it as Kierkegaard did. When theists try to prove God empirically, they've already surrendered to the scientific worldview. If God is simply an object of knowledge, a matter for debate, then He's only technology. In short, I can respect a traditional theist, but I personally think they "contaminate" religion when they understand it as a sort of science or objective knowledge.

So here's how I read you. You understand yourself to be an especially patient, curious, and experienced student of the patterns of life. Great. The implication, however, may be that others here are not. You are welcome to that belief. In my experience, lots of guys think they are the smartest person they know. I know I do.

So of course I'm not exactly dazzled by your bare assurances. You haven't responded to my ideas with sufficient detail or thought to even convince me that you understand them. That's OK. We're on stage, are we not? I'm contributing to a dialogue that others can read for what I hope is their amusement. Anyway, I wish you well and will probably move on for now.

Within the system we do indeed find causes and relations. Perhaps we even find a TOE. But this TOE would have to explain its own existence to be a theory of everything. What it can be is the global pattern from which local patterns can be deduced. It itself cannot be deduced from a higher theory, since it is itself the highest theory by assumption.

That's already the ideal situation. Most human beings (as I see it) have a "tool belt" of maxims or job-specific principles that do not perfectly cohere. We have vocabularies for different aspects of life that are no commensurate. One definition of philosophy might be to make these vocabularies as commensurate as possible -- to understand how all the little patterns fit together into one harmonized "master" pattern.

If there is a master pattern, then (by definition) it is simply the notion of the real. It is the nature of essence of human experience. By definition there is nothing outside this pattern, so it just is what it is. One can very well argue that no master pattern is stable. This is itself a sort of master pattern and therefore problematic. But, again, you really haven't addressed my arguments for ultimate contingency. To sum up, the exploration of exploration itself is what reveals this contingency.

While it is true that in our practical life we often accept a given framework as given, it is not true that the philosophical argument for necessary contingency is "lazy common sense." Indeed, it's a fairly abstract thought. It may even be offensive or terrible to those who think they can explain this brute fact. For instance, some people think that God, as they conceive him or it, is such an explanation. I'm saying that God cannot function this way, that God is not an explanation.

Explanation is local, never global. That's my thesis. This itself, however, can be understood as a vision of "God" as brute fact. Indeed, what is a first cause but brute fact in the first place?

Is that an acknowledgement of the contingency of the is?

Speaking of such exploration, one of the patterns I've noticed and enjoying thinking about is the "fundamental pose" of a personality. These poses vary, but the existence of the pose is something that I find again and again. One of the reasons I like forums is to observe the "wildlife," the other human beings projecting themselves as intellectual personalities. Experimentation is even possible. We "inject" the personality with symbols and see what kind of symbols they will omit in turn. Of course I too am part of the "wildlife," and others "experiment" on me in the same way.

Exploring for observations of others that reveal patterns in nature. — Rich

I can relate to that. I still maintain that the largest pattern that contains all smaller patterns within it must be a "brute fact." The largest pattern just is. To prove otherwise would be to include this "largest" pattern in a still larger pattern. This new largest pattern simply becomes the brute fact. In short, "brute fact" or "it just is" must be the "outside" of any system of patterns. This is not to say that this system cannot grow, but only that it will remain "haunted" by an ultimate contingency. As I see it, this applies to science, metaphysics, and religion.

Who wants to? Scientists and philosophers, of course. I happen to work in science myself, though I'm more passionate about philosophy. It may be that philosophy or the philosopher discovers that "making up stories" is something like the human essence. One such story might be the ultimate story, the objective story, the story not-to-be-revised. The philosopher may, as a finale, put his own chosen role in doubt.

While it is easy to make up stories, it's not so easy to make up the stories that become tomorrow's common sense.

You didn't respond to my notion of the necessity of "brute fact" at the origin of any cosmic narrative.

If I may ask, how do you see yourself here? Are you anti-science? Pro-science? A theist? What's your story? What are you trying to say? I ask sincerely.

You're right. It's not an explanation. It reveals the quest for or the question about the "ultimate ground" to be a fool's errand or a pseudo-question. As far as zero-effort is concerned, I think you're quite wrong there. Passionate thinking about this issue led me to this realization on my own. I then discovered that Hegel, for instance, also (for all his rationalism) left the Idea itself unconditioned. Or rather it "conditioned itself in perfect freedom," having no outside.

In some ways we agree. I think there is faith at the basis of every position. We have to at least assume some method for finding the truth and even the existence of a universal truth in the first place.

Just underscoring that "It just happened" is no better or worse than "God did it" — Rich

In my view, "it just happened" is the only "ultimate" explanation, which is to say that the system as a whole must be "unconditioned." Not that he's an authority, but this is also my understanding of Hegel's logic. Explanation can only function "within" the "system," where this system is the conceptual vision or narrative of reality as a whole.

If one says "God did it," then "God" becomes part of the system or the narrative. So instead of "there just was nature," we have "there just was or is a God who created nature." God himself, in other words, must be revealed as contingent to the impious mind that wants to understand. In my view, the projection of personality on God obscures this contingency. I don't claim that this disproves God. I only claim that God cannot function as a "logically" satisfying explanation. One can of course believe and accept the mystery. Similarly one can believe that science is ideal for determining conditions "within" the necessarily unconditioned system.

*I have yet to hear a good argument against the necessity of ultimate contingency. But maybe I'm just stubborn.

Perhaps we can cay that, sure, the meaning science is fuzzy. But it's no too fuzzy to work with. But Darth has a point. The word has a certain magic. Those with no interest in the details of science still trust the expert culture that they don't understand. Just about any charlatan will want to claim what he is hawking is "science." Even religion is often debated as if God were an object to be proved or known through the "science" of meta-physics. What I'd call "crude" religion is a renegade pseudo-science, accepting the prestige of science while disdaining its method and limitations.

What I like about science is that it makes definite "prophecies." There is a risk in making a definite prophecy. One thinks for contrast of the end-of-the-world predictions that didn't come true. On the other hand, the "prophesied" recent eclipse occurred. I saw it with my own eyes. Of course I've also flown through the air in a winged tube.

I find it believable that he was a spy. In that case, he was a highly positioned spy within the French government. He's a fascinating character, a neo-Hegelian spook trying to install the philosopher-king. He was willing to get his hands dirty. I'm not a revolutionary type myself, but I respect that he (apparently) put his money where his mouth was.

Yes.

Kojeve thought the philosopher should become a tyrant. He was fascinated by Stalin and Mao. I don't think that way myself, but I do think the "limits of persuasion" are highly significant.

Aside from his politics, Kojeve is one of my favorites. His lectures on Hegel are profound. I don't agree with every point, but his vision of Hegel is pure intellectual delight.

Returning to the limits of persuasion, I tend to view the plurality of worldviews or philosophies as personal adaptions to specific environments. Philosophies are as unique as snowflakes or fingerprints. In my view, all philosophies are "ultimately" groundless. I mean that unquestioned and perhaps unconscious assumptions lie at their base. This does not mean that I regard them all as equal.

Instead I suggest that personality "is" a hierarchical vision, albeit often implicitly. Those who understand superiority or virtue in terms of knowledge or self-knowledge may seek to make this hierarchy explicit to themselves. Others just live it. Of course I am especially interested in this kind of self-consciousness, and one of the things I love about Kojeve was his vision of philosophy as a sort of religion of self-consciousness.

*Note that the "limits of persuasion" are related to the fact that we live in a world where the "grownups" do not agree. So it takes some grit to stand confidently in the cognitive dissonance of this pluralism. A philosopher does more than that. He projects his own personality as a truth or law. That's fascinating. To be really interesting is to be original, and in this sense philosophers are non-fiction "poets." Therefore they are arguably driven by Bloom's anxiety of influence. I think this connects to existentialism's authenticity. It may even be the "truth" of that authenticity --the guts to create oneself. But all this is just my "nonfiction" "poetry."

Is there a certain way that we ought to express masculinity? — Posty McPostface

As I see it this is _the_ philosophical question --or at least the central question of amateur or genuine philosophy. I stress "amateur" as opposed to academic philosophy as "genuine" because insisting that philosophy should be an institutionalized expert culture is already to assert implicitly "a certain way that we ought to express masculinity." It _assumes_ a "spirit of seriousness" and IMO is already "scientistic." The medium is the message here. The invisible background is itself already the decision.

I stress masculinity when I ought to stress virtue. The deep question is "how ought we to express virtue?" Arguably we answer this constantly whether we want to or not. If I conflate the expression of masculinity and virtue, I'm just nodding to the fact that (to my knowledge) the vast majority of those (outside of the institutions of expert culture) who invoke the "great philosophers" in their presentations of their own notions of virtue are men. These great philosophers, especially "the old masters," are of course themselves men. They are the "fathers" of profound, transcendent, universal truth. This "profound, transcendent, universal truth" is itself the philosophical "phallus."

I personally read political and epistemological positions as secondary. They are (for me) expressions of personal virtue. If they are presented as "rational," then rationality itself is the personal virtue involved.

From my arguably perverse and boring and irrational perspective, Posty's OP question implies a answer. As he asked it, he implied that seeking after the true way to express masculinity (virtue in men) is itself the true way of expressing masculinity (virtue in men). I agree, but explicitly, and without thinking the question is merely rhetorical.

Thanks, T.

The point is to grapple with it and keep it at the forefront of thought continually. I think the generic "wisdom" is to think about it for a bit and move on, but it is the core of the issue as our very motivations are the core of what we do, think, plan, etc. Survival/boredom, and absurdity are all wrapped in our very existence as self-reflecting beings. — schopenhauer1

I can relate to that. We are both philosophers. I may have challenged your post, but I am more like you than like those who never wrestle with these things. I had no choice in my teens and 20s. Philosophy was a matter of life and death for me then. Somehow I made peace with the void. The world is perhaps self-devouring will in its essence. Philosophy is perhaps a sophistry fooled by its own forged trans-rhetorical credentials. Maybe the endless war of self-asserting personalities is the "truth." As long as one is enjoying this self-assertion, perhaps by describing or inventing it, that's fine. (With me, anyway.)

I never said anyone was dullards, just that some people disarm others by throwing the term "juvenile" around to dissuade them from the line of questioning. I am not so sure about individuals "deciding" that the came is worth the candle. Many go through the motions without deciding anything. — schopenhauer1

To be fair, you have a point. Some people avoid that kind of thinking. To them it's uncanny, suspicious. So they hide from the horror in an "adult" pose that's also describable as thoughtless conformity. I still maintain that some of us do indeed decide.

But what is wrong with this? I don't see the contradiction in living life yet rejecting the premises of life itself. Indeed, life is presented to humans as it is already structured, and people can evaluate and analyze the structure and their place in it. If that is "needing the world as a stage", again, what is wrong with that? Suicide is not the only answer to existential questioning. — schopenhauer1

I'm not at all against heavy or "terrifying" thinking. My motto just now is "Death is God." We are transcendence of the given against a background of nothingness. The "authentic" I is self-consciously groundless, a risky venture. I'm also not one to call things "wrong." But as a reader of texts and personalities (like everyone) I notice performative contradictions here and there. Did Schopenhauer have a valid argument against suicide? I remember he has some kind of spiel, but maybe it was weaker than what I loved about him. If life is truly evil and horrible, then suicide is rational and noble. (I myself reserve it as a right in the face of worst-case scenarios. ) It's more plausible that life includes radical evil, unutterable horror. But it includes also intense ecstasy: sex and creativity come to mind. And I certainly include sex with one's self.

Not quite sure what you mean by "switched-on". I agree that that age group may be the most existential, but that may be for circumstantial reasons. Funny, how existential thinking is juvenile but religious belief is considered just cultivating a deep longing. I see the two as very related but one without the trappings of metaphysical restraints. — schopenhauer1

By "swtiched-on" I mean horny, desirous, attracted to the good things in life.

I actually identify with a variant of existentialism. I embrace subjectivity. So I mostly criticize the "outward projection" of anti-natalism. I imagine (in general, not aimed at you) an unhappy person convincing themselves that everyone is "really" unhappy. In the same way, a theist might think that every atheist is "really" a theist.

Yes, yes and yes.
Music is a type of truth in which there is a mathematical order between the notes played. Get it wrong and it is discordant.
A warriors truth may be the truth about his inner fortitude or the pursuit of the truth as to whether he is the greatest warrior ever. To this end he will pit himself against strong adversaries.
A woman may be looking for the truth about her beauty. If she does everything right, does she possess it? Or she may be looking to reveal the truth about her beauty to the beau. — MikeL

Sure, we can stretch the word "truth" to include these things, but certainly these are different from the philosophical notion of truth.

But you do make an interesting point. The warrior may be trying to answer a question. Am I brave enough to face death ? Brave enough to kill? Or, as you say, am I an effective warrior? But surely chance plays a role in who survives a battle, so perhaps bravery is fundamental.

But how does the warrior answer this question? Not with words. He stands in risk.

Also I think the woman wants to be beautiful. So her asking whether she is can be understood as a decision about moving onto to other projects or not.

So perhaps self-sculputre involves truth in the sense that we have to believe that we are successfully being that which we want to be. The philosopher might ask himself whether he's asking good questions or providing good answer, whether he is being a true/successful philosopher or not. But I think he still understands this as a form of beauty or nobility. He enjoys not only the process of philosophy but the image of himself as a philosopher, as a variant of the hero.

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic. This is meant to disparage the inquirer by making them think that their question is not worthy for serious consideration. — schopenhauer1

What if many people occasionally do earnestly wrestle with the question of whether life is worth living? Cleary suicide occurs, and this is presumably the manifestation of an answer to that question in the negative. At least they do not consider their own lives worth living. The question of whether we should reproduce is clearly related to whether life is good on the whole.

Most of us think so, at least given a minimum of health and resources. Many of us are thoughtful types who have not always thought so. In our teens and 20s perhaps we weren't sure the ecstasy was worth the horror. Note that this is also the time where the individual tends to find a place in the economy. S/he has to acquire and prove some marketable capability. "We" filthy life-affirmers can frame the youthful excesses of existential angst as the pain of a second weaning -- of learning to live without the breast-milk of some authoritative justification of life. Hence "juvenile." Or we may frame such excess or life-negativity in terms of an erotic frigidity. Allured by life's voluptuous charms enough to ignore her yellow or even red teeth, it's hard not see a rejection of her in terms of a lack of lust. Is the anti-natalist fully switched-on?

The life-affirmer can hardly help interpreting the crisis of the anti-natalist except in terms of a personal problem projected outward. This need to project anti-natalism outward is itself an attachment to the drama of life. The anti-natalist needs the world as a stage on which to perform his rejection of the world. Of course Schopenhauer lived to a ripe old age with his prostitutes and his books. He slept by a pair of pistols, ready to kill anyone trying to snatch his precious life or property away from him.

How are we to know that these are just effective deceptions or misdirections that sophisticated societies have used to disarm the existential question-asker from engaging in questions that would lead to despair? It could be a useful meme that has effectively shifted people's questions away from existence itself so that they forget it as a topic of legitimacy and focus on details so that society can keep on moving forward without leading to feelings of angst. — schopenhauer1

This sounds like conspiracy theory. Who is this society character? Also, when has information ever been freer? Look at what Netflix has to offer. We swim in the contemplation of suicide and murder. Our art is "Shakespearean." It's just not plausible that some "center" is preventing authentic contemplation of existence. Where are these dullards who have never contemplated whether life is worth living? You may find some conservatives with a God narrative, but that's not even the rule anymore. "Society" keeps moving forward because most humans individually decide that the game is worth the candle. The anti-natalist can call them shallow or irrational and they can understand anti-natalism as squeamishness, erotic frigidity, etc., or, in general, as a personal problem/decision vainly projected outward as a universal truth. But then anti-natalism is one voice among so many others condemning life as guilty, ugly, sinful. Both sides can talk about rational justifications, but it's more plausible that some gut-level decisions or just semi-fixed emotional tonalities are involved.

et, the truth is, beauty, power, wealth seem to be on a lower rung on the value ladder. May be it's just me. What do you think? To me, truth seems to be fundamentally connected to the nature of the universe itself. Thus, truth seems to be the ultimate goal of human endeavor...achieving the proverbial "oneness" with ultimate reality. — TheMadFool

I like the phrase "value ladder." I think these ladders vary quite a bit from person to person. Of course I have an itch for the truth and this oneness with things, which is why I bother to think or notice this variance of ladders from person to person.

On the other hand, I can interpret my own interpretation of reality as a poetic act. Maybe I am painting or finishing reality. Perhaps reality is incomplete. We are thrown into the process of meaning-making, truth-finding, and/or poesis. Part of this meaning making would be understanding or peticicizing ourselves as being thrown into this meaning-making. As I find the "truth" about myself, I alter this truth about myself. All that I previously knew is recontextualized by every new bit of knowledge. As I try to fix my own nature in terms of motives, the discovery or postulation of new motive reframes this quest to fix my nature. Because why do I want to fix or discover my nature? What is my motivation for finding my motivation? We enter the vortex.

Sure, you're making sense. But my main point was the gap between Truth and The Noble. As I see it, philosophers are probably exactly the kind of people who will identity to two. They are noble inasmuch as they participate in the sacred pursuit of Truth. This pursuit of Truth is the highest and universal self, perhaps. But why not beauty? Does a composer pursue Truth?

Or what about war? Does a great warrior pursue truth? Does a beautiful young women (or man) learning how to dress to maximize her beauty pursue truth? And yet I'd include that in the self-sculpture I have in mind. So maybe:

Non-life -> Life -> Free time / affluence -> generalized self-sculpture including Truth, Beauty, Power, Wealth, etc.